Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (17 page)

Star-girl?  Demosthenes chuckled.
 
Astraneanis
.  A rather tranquil nickname for a
blood-soaked being.

Eurydike's wide eyes and the conspicuous
excuse she had just planted seemed almost certain to foreshadow
coming failure.

“A little later, I asked if she had any
brothers or sisters.  She said one sister.”  Eurydike's
grip shifted from Demosthenes' neck to his hands so that they might
support her weight as she bent her naked body into an arch and
lowered her head back, back, until it was submerged in the bath.
 Surfacing, she spat a stream of water into the air,
fountain-like, before twisting in her master's lap to sit across
it.  While she finished the maneuver and wiped water from her
eyes, Demosthenes waited patiently for what he rather doubted would
be useful intelligence.

Eurydike resumed, “I asked where this sister
was, and she said, 'Walking next to me in the agora asking
questions like her master told her to.”  Eurydike widened her
eyes in an assertion of innocence.  “But I swear I was subtle
as can be, lord!”  Although apologetic, Eurydike did not seem
upset by her failure.

“I know you were, bright eyes,” Demosthenes
reassured her.  He kissed the nape of her neck, which tasted
faintly of olive oil.  “You did well.”

Eurydike twisted over her master's shoulder,
giving him a face full of wet freckled breast while she reached for
the clay cup of wine they were sharing.  She poured a trickle
onto her lips, which pursed as though the wine were sour, which it
was not.  “I do have a big problem with Thalassia, though,”
she said glumly.  She put the cup's rim to Demosthenes' lip
and made him drink.  “Two problems, actually.”

“That few?  Do tell.”

“Well, for one, I know you said not to
expect much of her, but she's fucking 
useless
.
 Sure, she carries water like a horse, but she claims to be
able to cook only one thing.  It's
called 
bitchcakes
.  She said she made you some
already in Pylos, and you don't want to eat them again.”

“True...” Demosthenes agreed.

“I'm not stupid,” Eurydike said with a look
of mild annoyance.  “I know there's no such thing as a
bitchcake.  She's fucking with me, and now so are you.
 Which is fine, but only because of my second problem.”

The slick Thracian's mouth settled into an
angry pout, and her eyes cast about the room as if in search of
some object at which to direct her spontaneous ire.

“Out with it already!” Demosthenes urged
playfully.

Eurydike graced him with a petulant look and
sighed just as petulantly.  “The second problem, lord, is—”
 She shook sodden locks.  “No, it's too embarrassing.
 I can't say.”

Demosthenes slapped the water, splashing his
slave's face and ample breast.  “You try my patience, Thratta.
 Do you want me to set you free?”

It was a common threat he deployed, but
never meant.  The options for someone like Eurydike upon
gaining freedom were, effectively, cheap prostitute and even
cheaper prostitute.

The slave giggled, as was her custom when
her master chided her.  Usually she knew full well she was
asking for it, as was the case now.  Her warm, near-weightless
soft body shifted on his lap until she faced him squarely.

“The problem is that I
fucking 
like
 her!” Eurydike groaned.  Her
head slumped onto Demosthenes' shoulder in theatrical despair.
 “I tried to hate her, lord, I did!” she sobbed into his
collarbone.  “But you know what that useless bitch did?
 She took my old dresses from me and let me use the money you
gave us to buy new ones for 
myself!
  And you
should have seen what we paid because of her!  She slithers up
and talks with that dumb, fake accent of hers—you notice how it
comes and goes—and the shop owners practically hand over whatever
she wants.  I can't even be jealous of her evil powers because
she uses them to do such good!”

After a final, extended groan, Eurydike
raised the face she had hidden in mock shame to look at her master.
 After a moment she put an open palm on one of his freshly
shaven cheeks and planted a wet kiss on the other.

“You look frightened, lord,” she observed.
 “What's wrong?”

Demosthenes shuddered, but not from the
chill of the rapidly cooling bathwater.  “I was just wondering
which state of affairs is worse for me,” he confessed bleakly,
“having you at Thalassia's throat … or having you on her side.”

The following morning, Demosthenes stood on
the rooftop terrace alone with Thalassia.

“A clumsy spy you sent,” she said.  She
showed no trace of being annoyed.  “You could not have thought
that would work.  But I suppose the attempt shows that I must
be more forthright.”

Demosthenes stood beside her on the rail,
looking out over the dawn-lit red clay rooftops of Athens.  He
considered his response and opted for directness.  “Foremost,
I would know why you are called traitor,” he said.

Thalassia fell silent for a long while, just
staring over the city.  “Your mistakes caused the deaths of
many men in Aetolia,” she said at length, “including a hundred and
twenty Athenian citizens.  You felt such shame that you could
not bear to show your face in this city afterward.  Is the
wound not still just as raw as it was on the day it occurred?”

Indeed, her mere mention of the disaster in
Aetolia, where more Athenians under his command were slaughtered in
one day than should have fallen in any five battles lost, caused a
sudden pang in Demosthenes' belly and a knot in his chest.
 But he drew a cleansing breath and answered with a voice that
shook but a little.

“That failure causes me immense shame, which
I will take to my grave.  But I own the action and make no
secret of it, as you seem to wish to do.  My life is open to
you.  The reverse must also be true.  I will know of your
shame... or have you cast from my house.  Whatever the
cost.”

Thalassia fell silent again, and then,
“I 
did
 betray them.  Is that enough?  I
turned my back on the Caliate, on people who were my friends, and
on the leader who had given me so much.  I betrayed them for
the sake of 
him
.”  She did not speak the name of
the Worm, but there was much venom in the referring pronoun.
 Her wintry blue eyes remained fixed on the rooftops, to which
she also seemed to address her quiet confession.  “Is that
enough?” she repeated, making clear it was her fervent hope that it
would be.

“It is not,” Demosthenes said.  “But...
today, it shall suffice.  When you are ready, we shall speak
again on the matter, although it must be soon.  For now, you
may tell me of other things.  Such as what is
a 
layer
?”

Thalassia looked over at him, her eyes
suddenly brighter, surely in gratitude for the change of topic to
one less sensitive.

Then she frowned.  “It's complicated...
but...”  She gestured at the corner of the rooftop which had
become her favored workspace.  “Do you see that stack of
parchments there?” 

Demosthenes nodded.  The leaves in
question were neat squares, each bearing a drawing of some
innovation which Thalassia conceived of introducing to
Athens. 

“Imagine that one of the sheets in the stack
is this world,” she instructed.  “Athens, all of Hellas, is a
drop of ink on its surface.  Now imagine that likewise every
sheet in the pile is a world unto itself, some very much like your
own, others wildly different.  On the sheet above yours, there
is another Demosthenes who never met me, because there is no me
there to meet.  He marches on in ignorance of the fate he'll
meet one day in Sicily. On other sheets, there are still other
Demosthenes, some of whom lead lives very different from your own
and who will meet different deaths.  On others, Demosthenes
never existed at all because his parents never met or themselves
never existed.”

Thalassia paused and looked at him gently,
earnestly, as a tutor would at a student, in search of
understanding.  He was pleasantly surprised by her
patience.

“That is what you wish to do to the Worm,”
Demosthenes observed, hopefully proving that he understood at least
a little.  “You would cause him never to exist.”

Thalassia's answering expression suggested
that he had fallen at least somewhat shy of making his tutor
proud.

“Yes, but...” she began, and stopped.
 “I suppose it's as good a time as any to tell you what makes
him unlike any other being in the universe, apart from Magdalen.
 Across all layers, there is only 
one
 of him.
 And yours is the layer in which he was, or will be, born,
so—” 

In the hope of redeeming himself,
Demosthenes cut her off: “So if he is erased here, then unlike
Demosthenes of Thria, there will be no other Worms left in other
layers to carry on the name.”

This won him a crooked smile, a cryptic look
that said he was right... if perhaps not entirely.

“And then what will happen?” Demosthenes
asked.  “How will you know when you...
when 
we
 have done enough to erase him?”

Thalassia frowned and returned her gaze to
the rooftops.  “A good question,” she said.  “Too
good.”

“You have no answer?”

“Many answers,” she said.  “And none.
 I fucked Alkibiades last night.”

Demosthenes stood in silence, caught
off-guard by the sudden non-sequitur.

“As my ally, you need to know that,” she
said.  Still she did not look at him, and Demosthenes was glad
for it.  “I plan to do it again.  Regularly, maybe.
 But you needn't worry that—”

“I am not worried,” Demosthenes blurted.

Thalassia threw him a glance and resumed.
 “I didn't tell him anything.  About myself, about us.
 But I still think you should consider it.  I think we
can trust him, and he could be a valuable tool.”

Demosthenes dismissed from his mind a vivid
image of Thalassia on all fours, Alkibiades thrusting behind her.
 He snorted laughter.

“What?” Thalassia asked, smile at the
ready.

“Nothing...” Demosthenes said.  “Only
that I know what Alkibiades would say to that.  'My tool
is 
extremely
 valuable.'  But—” Demosthenes
quickly added, so as to deny Thalassia space in which to comment on
Alkibiades' tool, “I will consider it.  Especially now that
you and he—”

“It's physical, and nothing more.”

Demosthenes raised a palm.  “No more
need be said.  You are not my slave—and even if you were, as
Eurydike's behavior attests, it would make no difference when it
comes to Alkibiades.  I would only point out that Eurydike, to
her consternation, has grown fond of you. I hope that your new
arrangement does nothing to change that.”

Thalassia nodded, rather genuinely.
 “If it bothers her, I'll stop.”  She paused, threw
Demosthenes another glance.  “If it bothers you, I could stop,
too.”

Demosthenes considered his reply carefully,
mindful that Thalassia could not be lied to.  To be sure, he
would rather she did not dally with Alkibiades.  It seemed a
needless complication, but with or without the complication of
Alkibiades sticking his tool in her, it was plain to see that
dealing with Thalassia would be complicated.  Trying to
control her every action was doubtless a losing battle.  And,
of course, hanging heavily in her offer to stop was an unspoken
insistence that he himself be prepared to step in and help her
satisfy those urges which had sent her to Alkibiades' bed in the
first place. 

Rather than saying anything, even
unwittingly, that she might sense as an untruth, Demosthenes
summoned up the shade of the decrepit rhetoric tutor from his youth
and circumlocuted.  

“I appreciate your forthrightness,” he said.
“Yet if I am to exert influence upon your actions, I would just as
soon choose ones of greater import.”

So as not to extend conversation on a
subject with which he felt no right to feel uncomfortable, yet did,
Demosthenes excused himself and turned to descend into his
home.

“He seduced me,” Thalassia said plainly when
he was halfway to the hatch.

Demosthenes turned to find her leaning on
the rail, facing him, the hem of her sea-foam gown rustling in the
warm morning breeze.  Dawn's light set Athena's temple aglow
at her back.

“Who?  Alkib—” he began.  Had he
taken but an instant to think, and looked first into Thalassia's
eyes, he would have known.  Not Alkibiades.  

The Worm.

“Oh...” he said.

“He made me think he loved me.  That I
loved him.  I... did love him.  But he used me against
the Caliate.  Against Magdalen.  When they captured me,
Magdalen should have punished me in ways that are unimaginable to
you.  Instead, she just... forgave me.”

Finishing, Thalassia stood looking at him
with wide eyes that appeared nothing short of sincere.

Demosthenes showed his gratitude with a
faint smile.  He was touched by this new willingness of
Thalassia to lay herself bare—even while some part of him
understood that she surely was better even than Kleon at making
lies seem as truth.

He began to resume his exit, but turned
again before leaving to address Thalassia once more.  He did
not want to hurt her...  except that
he 
did
 want to. 

“You told Eden you were still loyal to
Magdalen,” he said.  “Is it under her orders that you came
here, stranding your companions... or have you betrayed Magdalen
yet again?”

Thalassia made no spoken reply, but her look
and her silence gave the answer.

The following morning, a team of laborers
worked in front of Demosthenes' home to remove from its crowded
storerooms and load into an oxcart his personal share of the
captured Spartan arms and armor for transport to the family estate
in Thria.